As promised earlier:
Some of you might remember my Christmas turducken thread. I posted some notes and photos on the making of it but didn't really give the full recipe. So here it is...

Basically, a turducken is a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey with stuffing to fill the gaps in between birds, roasted. If that sounds like a lot of work, you're right. It took several hours to prepare the birds and over nine hours to roast them. Making a turducken isn't a task to be undertaken lightly.

Before preparing a turducken, consider the number of people you intend to feed. Not only will it take a long time, it produces a lot of food. On Christmas day, at lunch, there were over a dozen people and they consumed only a half of the turducken. The people who visited for dinner accounted for only another quarter of it. Strepsil and I got another two meals each out of the remaining bits. If you're only feeding a small group you might want to consider something smaller.

So, I imagine I hear you asking. How does one make a turducken? I'm glad you asked.

First you need a chicken, a duck, a turkey and some very sharp knives:



I have seen ducks available in some Australian chain supermarkets but I didn't get mine from any of them. The duck and turkey were both pre-ordered from a very good butcher near Strepsil's home. At other times of the year you might be able to just walk in to any butcher or supermarket and pick up a duck or a turkey without any trouble but, on Christmas eve, there is no way to be sure of getting the sizes you want or decent quality. Ordering in advance from a reputable butcher ensures that. You'll also need to shop for size. We got a 5kg turkey, a 1.8kg duck and a 1.3kg chicken and that all worked out pretty well.

Then you have to remove all the bones from the chicken and the duck.

Cut off the wing tips at the second joint. Lie the bird on its breast and make an incision along the length of the spine, cutting down to the bone.

Separate the flesh and skin from the spine on one side with the tip of the knife or a scalpel. (I use and recommend Mundial's 6 inch flexible-bladed boning knife.

A short, narrow blade is good for getting in close for the trickier bits.) Work your way around the rib cage, separating flesh from bone until you reach the breastbone. Try not to break the skin. When you reach the shoulder and hip joints you will need to dislocate them and cut through the connecting tissue before you continue around.

(I didn't photograph the flensing operations on the night so I have scanned the following three images from another recipe in a book).



Repeat for the other side of the rib cage.

When both sides are done the meat will only be connected along the sternum. The flesh is quite thin along the breastbone so you will need to be careful.

Lift the ass-end of the spine and rib cage away from the meat and carefully cut it away from the meat.



Next we need to remove the bones in the limbs but we still don't want to break the skin. It's best to start with the thighs. The bones are bigger and they make good practice for the fiddlier wing bones.

Grab the top of a thigh from the inside in one hand and cut around the top of the bone to remove the meat. Scrape down and around the bone to remove the meat to the next joint. Cut around the joint and continue to the end. Pull the bone back out like an arm coming out of a jacket-sleeve and cut it away at the end.



Repeat the procedure for the other leg and the wings. You should end up with something that looks a bit like this:



Then do it all again for the the duck (or the chicken if you did the duck first.




The turkey is a bit easier. Not only is the skeleton larger but we don't want to get rid of all of it. For cosmetic reasons (and because they're great hand-held snacks) we want to leave the wings and drumsticks. So all you'll need to do is follow the procedure for the rib-cage and spine then remove only the thigh bone of the legs, leaving something that looks like an out-take from the Alien movies:



If you like, you can keep the removed bones to make stock as the base for a gravy.

While you're doing that, Strepsil makes the stuffing



The stuffing can be almost anything that you would stuff into a roast bird. We used an apple and brown rice stuffing that was chosen because it sounded tasty and it wouldn't conflict with any of our friends' food allergies. We know people with gluten problems (which ruled out a bread-based stuffing) and pepper problems (which rules out the highly-spiced cajun type stuffings that some people recommend). It tasted a bit bland by itself but it absorbed flavour from the spices and birds brilliantly. Feel free to experiment.

Here's the stuffing recipe we used:

APPLE BROWN RICE STUFFING

1 Red apple - cored and diced
1/2 cup Chopped onions
1/2 cup Sliced celery
1/3 cup Seedless raisins
1/2 teaspoon Seasoned salt
1/4 teaspoon Dry thyme leaves
1/4 teaspoon Ground black pepper
2 teaspoon Margarine
3 cups Brown rice cooked in apple juice
1/3 cup Rice bran
1/3 cup Slivered almonds, toasted
1/4 cup Apple juice

Cook apple, onions, celery, raisins, seasoned salt, thyme, and pepper in margarine in large skillet until vegetables are tender crisp. Stir in remaining ingredients.

We also added a spice mixture:

2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons paprika
1 tablespoon black pepper
2 teaspoons dried thyme

Once the birds are all naked and you have your stuffing, stack them with a layer of stuffing in between each of them. First the turkey. Lay it out flat, skin-side down and sprinkle about a third of the spice mix over it. Then cover that with a generous amount of stuffing (exactly how much you need will depend on the sizes of your birds).



Lay the duck on top and repeat with another third of the spice mix and more stuffing then repeat with the chicken, the remaining spice mix and stuffing.



Then you roll the whole mess up by grabbing the sides of the turkey and lifting them up and over the rest of the birds.



A v-shaped roasting rack can be a great help here.

Please resist the urge to resort to cheap internet jokes



Pull the edges of the turkey together and sew it up. You MUST use cotton thread. Synthetic threads might melt during roasting. This would be bad. Truss it so that it looks like a whole turkey again (once again - no synthetic string).



Sitting it on a rack in the roasting dish is a good idea. This dish produces a lot of dripping and you don't want to deep-fry its lower half.

Then you put it in a very slow oven (120¡C, 250¡F) until it is cooked through. This will take many, many hours. How many will depend on the size of your birds and the composition of your stuffing. The only way to be sure it is cooked through is to check that the temperature at the centre is high enough. It is not done until the centre is at 75¡C (165¡F) You can buy roasting thermometers in a wide range of styles and prices from a simple analogue dial on a spike to elaborate digital devices like mine.

I highly recommend the Cook-Chill model from HLP Controls (scroll down).



This model allows you to set high and low temperature alarms and includes a standard kitchen timer. It has a probe on a thin but oven-safe 1 metre cable so you can keep an eye on the progress of the turducken without opening the oven.

The Christmas turducken took 9 hours and 15 minutes to cook. You should let it sit for about 15 minutes after taking it out of the oven to let the juices redistribute. (Don't worry, it won't get cold. That much meat mass holds a lot of heat.)



While it is sitting you can use the time to make gravy from the pan drippings. When people begin to threaten you, it is time to carve and serve: